This history provides an important foundation for my
ongoing quest to understand the right's ability to operate without the
constraints of hypocrisy or consistency in an environment of epistemic
relativism so extreme that we end up believing that wrong is right. It's
literally mind-boggling.

There are a couple of mechanisms by which this is occurring. An
example of the first kind was this truly mind-boggling exchange between
Monica Crowley and Stuart Varney the other day on Fox News, wherein
Crowley leapt upon the recent releases of intelligence from Guantanamo
via WikiLeaks to declare that they established once and for all that, by
golly, torture really did work!

VARNEY: I want your judgment. Do you think President Obama would order it done?

CROWLEY: I think if there were an imminent threat, the commander in chief, regardless of who it was, would order it done, yes.

VARNEY: And you think it should be done.

CROWLEY: I absolutely think it should be done. Listen, the
commander-in-chief has one job, and that's to protect American lives.
You need to do what's necessary when faced with an imminent threat to do
it.

Nevermind that Crowley's evidence that torture works is dubious at
best. But it's breathtaking how quickly Crowley and Varney leap over the
question: If torture works, should you do it?

What seems not to cross either Crowley's or Varney's minds is the
notion that the president might have a higher calling to the nation than
simply keeping Americans alive -- that preserving the Constitution and,
concomitantly, both our long-term security and our standing in the
world as a moral beacon, might be such a higher purpose. The president
has an obligation not to make America into a nation of torturers, too.
(Of course, it's worth observing that the previous president -- an
object of ardent admiration by both these pundits -- not only had a
disastrous record on this latter obligation, he was also an abject
failure in terms of preserving American lives, too.)

This really is a simple and clear moral issue: Does America torture
or not? It is not just a cliche but a great truth that "the torturer is
the enemy of all mankind". Which side are we on?

But in the inverted moral world of conservatives, that is not even an
issue. All that is at stake for them is criticizing any liberal
politician or policy and ardently defending any conservative or
Republican. That's their moral compass.

This same imperative is what drives the second mechanism by which the
Right's world is turned inside out. And that is a simple and
uncomplicated refusal to accepts facts as realities and to embrace lies
in their place -- if those lies burnish the emotional narratives upon
which the Right ultimately relies for its appeal.

This is manifest particularly in the case of the Birthers, who are
singularly immune to fact, logic, reason, or rationality, and ultimately
reality. Instead, they've built their little bubble world and nothing,
NOTHING will draw them out.

This is why President Obama's release this morning
of his long-form birth certificate will not be the air-clearing
catharsis he hopes it will be -- it's just the beginning of the next
phase in the Birthers' conspiracism.

Because the overriding narrative in all this is what matters to these
folks -- namely, that Barack Obama is not a legitimate president.

They absolutely need to believe this, you see, because these folks are all right-wing authoritarians.

Right-wing populism is always fueled and populated by
right-wing authoritarians -- people who believe that the nation/state
needs strong rulers and that it's the duty of citizens to obey them
assiduously. This why they suffer so much cognitive dissonance when the
nation's top authority is a Democrat/liberal/socialist/Marxist/fascist
-- and why their first impulse, in such situations, is to embark on a
vicious campaign of delegitimization (see, e.g., Bill Clinton). It's why
they basically go insane.

Nothing Obama does will ever satisfy the likes of Liz Cheney. Right-wing
authoritarians believe above all in bowing and adhering to those in
authority -- and the thought of bowing to a Democratic president,
liberal or otherwise, as a legitimate president is too much cognitive
dissonance for them to handle.

So they turn the world upside down: Torture is hunky-dory, truth is
falsehood, facts are fiction. It's the only way they can continue to
cling to a worldview that constantly runs aground on the hard shoals of
reality.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.